Image capture devices, such as cameras, can be used to capture an image of a section of a view, such as a section of the front of a house. The size of the section of the view captured by a camera is known as the field of view of the camera. Adjusting a lens associated with a camera may increase the field of view. However, there is a limit beyond which the field of view of the camera cannot be increased without compromising the quality, or resolution, of the captured image.
It is sometimes necessary to capture an image of a view that is larger than can be captured within the field of view of a camera. To do so, multiple images of different segments of the view can be taken and then the images can be joined together (“merged”) to form a composite image, known as a panoramic image. The camera is oriented in a different direction for each of the images to capture images of the different segments of the view, and the orientation of the camera is selected so that the captured images overlap each other. The images of the different segments are typically projected onto a surface, such as a cylinder, a sphere or a plane, before they are merged together to form a panoramic image.
An image captured by a camera distorts the sizes of objects depicted in the image so that distant objects appear smaller than closer objects. The size distortion, which is known as perspective distortion, depends on the camera position, the pointing angle of the camera, and so forth. Consequently, an object depicted in two different images might not have the same size in the two images, because of perspective distortion.